Charles II of Spain was born in 1661 as the only surviving son of Philip IV and his second wife, Mariana of Austria, who was also his niece. This meant that Charles’s mother was simultaneously his cousin, and his grandmother was also his aunt. The Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs had practiced intermarriage for generations, and … Read more
Berlin/Moskau – Es ist eines der dunkelsten und am wenigsten aufgearbeiteten Kapitel des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Als die Rote Armee im Januar 1945 erstmals deutsches Reichsgebiet erreichte, begann eine Welle der Vergeltung, die sich vor allem gegen Frauen richtete. Historiker schätzen, dass bis zu zwei Millionen deutsche Frauen von sowjetischen Soldaten vergewaltigt wurden – das größte … Read more
In 1989, deep in the forests outside Leningrad in the Soviet Union, a relic of the Great Patriotic War was discovered that had somehow been overlooked and forgotten since 1943. Some hunters moving through a silver birch forest far from civilization stumbled upon a "wolf" — not the wolf of fairy tales, but a wolf … Read more
Kurt Daluege was a senior Nazi official who became the de facto Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. He was born on September 15, 1897, in Kreuzburg, then part of the German Empire. Daluege was still a high school student when World War I began on July 28, 1914. … Read more
On the night of April 23, 1947, the Lennox Lounge in Harlem was quiet and orderly. Bumpy Johnson sat at his usual corner table in a gray suit, dining with his wife, Mayme, and two business associates. Mayme wore burgundy. It was an ordinary evening in a famous club until Vito Genovese walked in. Genovese … Read more
In 1934, the new National Socialist government of Germany decided to overhaul how the nation remembered its war dead. Like most countries, Germany reserved one day a year as a day of remembrance, originally created to pay homage to the huge number of fallen from World War One. The day had been established by the … Read more
In 1949, at a charity gala inside the Waldorf Astoria, a Bronx gangster named Tommy Valente poured a glass of bourbon over the dress of Mayme Johnson, the wife of Harlem crime figure Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, in front of roughly 300 of New York’s most influential people. Valente had been drinking heavily and had spent … Read more
Witebsk, 19. Dezember 1943. Am siebten Tag der russischen Orscha-Offensive schreibt eine kleine Einheit deutscher Panzerjäger Geschichte – drei Nashorn-Jagdpanzer unter dem Kommando von Leutnant Albert Ernst stellen sich einer Übermacht aus sowjetischen T-34- und KW-1-Panzern entgegen und vernichten an einem einzigen Tag vierzehn feindliche Panzer. Das 519. Schwere Panzerjäger-Bataillon befand sich seit den frühen … Read more
In February 1962, a barbershop in Harlem became the setting for a quiet and devastating form of justice. Twenty men were present. None of them ever spoke about what they saw. The shop belonged to Charlie, a barber who had spent 62 years cutting hair in the neighborhood. On a Tuesday afternoon, the chairs were … Read more
A federal courtroom in Foley Square on the morning of March 11, 1954, was packed with spectators, reporters, and court officers who had come to watch Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson face conspiracy charges for drug trafficking. The defendant, a well-known Harlem figure, sat calmly at the defense table in a neatly pressed dark suit, showing no … Read more